World

Alleged American ISIS defector held in Iraq

Two sources with the Kurdish peshmerga military force told CBS News on Monday that its troops in northern Iraq had detained an apparent American ISIS defector as he tried to make his way back to Turkey.

The man, identified by Kurdish news organizations as Virginia resident Muhammad Jamal Amin, 27, was apprehended as he approached a peshmerga checkpoint near the Iraqi town of Sinjar.

Reports suggested that the peshmerga initially believed the suspect was a suicide bomber, and that they fired warning shots at him, but that he then identified himself as former militant with the Islamic State of Iraq and Syria (ISIS) who wished to turn himself in.